


As You Are

by AstroGirl



Category: The Orville (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fingerfucking, Robosexuality, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 13:33:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18389432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: They don't always need to use the simulator.





	As You Are

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Gen Prompt Bingo (although it is definitely _not_ gen!), for the prompt "simple harmonic motion." It was remarkably hard to get my former-physics-major brain to accept that I didn't have to write, literally or metaphorically, about the cyclical motion of weights bouncing on springs for this prompt. But apparently when I stop thinking about those words in terms of physics, my brain goes to, well, places like this.
> 
> This is set sometime after "A Happy Refrain," and well before "Identity, Pt. 1."

When she comes back from putting the kids to bed, Isaac is cleaning up the remains of their movie night snacks.

"Oh, Isaac," she says. "You didn't have to do that! It's not like you ate any of it."

He turns slightly and looks at her, the boys' ice cream bowls and her empty wineglass and crumb-laden cheese plate cradled in his hands. "It was most efficient for me to begin the task while you were occupied elsewhere," he says. "I assumed you did not wish for these things to remain where they were. I know you do not appreciate clutter. You inform the children of this fact frequently."

She finds herself grinning, more widely than she means to, but she can't quite seem to stop. It's amazing to her just how _good_ this feels. How comfortable and familiar, and yet oddly exciting it is. After all the awkwardness of figuring out how to date each other – and the more-than-awkwardness he put her through before he figured out what the hell he wanted – this is right where she'd hoped to be. With a person who makes her smile. 

A person with whom she can also do _this_.

She moves up behind him as he's loading the dishes into the recycler and kisses the side of his neck. The surface of it is cool, like metal; flexible, like fabric; and when he moves, it moves just a little like human skin over human muscles. The texture of him still feels strange under her lips, but that's a nice thing. No doubt she'll get used to it eventually, and that will be its own kind of nice, but for now the newness of it makes her happy. 

She lets her tongue dart out a little to taste him, and rests her hands on his hips. He doesn't only taste of metal, not really. She likes to think he tastes a little like rain, and if that's a bit of romantic silliness on her part, she's decided that she really doesn't care.

"Claire," he says, because she's asked him not to call her "Doctor" when they're alone. "Are you feeling... frisky?"

She laughs, feeling the warmth of her breath reflecting back at her from his neck. She used that word last time. He learns these things very well. "Mmm," she says, nuzzling him a little.

"Would you like to go to the simulator?"

The question, in Isaac's calm, matter-of-fact voice, sends a little electric thrill straight to her crotch. Isaac offering himself to her is another thing she both never wants to get used to and very, very much wants to get used to. But...

She releases him and steps back a little. "Actually," she says, suddenly feeling oddly nervous, an echo of that silly schoolgirl feeling that came over her when she asked him out for the first time. "I thought maybe we could try something else tonight."

He turns to face her, and she could swear, for a moment, that she can read an expression on his featureless face: curiosity and interest . But then she realizes it's not his face telling her that at all. It's something he's doing with his hands. Some slight turn of his wrists, a movement suggesting openness. She wonders if she's subconsciously been reading what passes for his emotions in them all along.

"What do you have in mind?" he says, and she tears her gaze from his hands, back to the steady blue of his not-really-eyes.

She tries not to let the nervous excitement show in her smile. She thinks she's probably failing, but it's an open question how much he picks up on such things anyway. "I thought maybe we could try having sex here." And then, hurrying on before he can state the obvious, "I know we'd be more limited in what we could do, but... it might be fun?"

He tilts his head at her, and his fingers move delicately in a way she can't quite interpret. "Are you displeased with the simulation? I can alter it if you wish."

"No!" She reaches out and takes his hands. His fingers curl around hers instantly, as if by instinct. Or some programmatic equivalent. "No, I _love_ your simulation." She gives him a smile that, she is sure, is warm enough that even he can't miss the feeling behind it.

"Is it because you do not wish to leave Ty and Marcus? Because if necessary I can remotely monitor--"

"No, Isaac. The boys know how to reach me if they wake up and need me. It's just that..." She licks her lips. "Well, I think sometimes I'd like to be able to see your face – your _real_ face – while we're making love."

"I see." She's often not sure, when he says that, whether he actually does or not.

"It's okay if you don't want to." She squeezes his hands. "Believe me, I find what we've been doing in the simulator _very_ satisfying. So if the idea makes you uncomfortable, or if it sounds like something you just wouldn't be interested in..." 

"It does not," he says. His head tilts a little the other way. "Very well. How do you wish to proceed? Shall I use my fingers to stimulate your genitalia?"

Claire can feel herself smirking a little at that. "Mmm, well, I do seem to recall that being one of your many talents." She lets go of his left hand and tugs him along by his right, casting a coy look over her shoulder. "Come on, then."

Obligingly, he follows her into the bedroom.

**

They lie in her bed, side by side. Claire is fully naked. Isaac is... Isaac. The same in bed, now, as he is out of it. The same body, the same face.

She touches that face, a gentle, lingering caress. He is smooth and cool beneath her fingers. It feels very _him_.

"What does that feel like to you?" she asks, because he isn't the only one who's allowed to be curious.

"When you move your hand in that fashion," he replies, "I am able to sense the pressure, temperature, and conductivity of your fingers with considerable precision."

"And what is your response to it?" she asks. Then, because she still can't resist asking this kind of question sometimes, "Do you like it?"

He seems to think about that for a moment. "The sensation itself," he says, finally, "is neither pleasurable nor otherwise. However, I have observed that such actions from you generally indicate affection, sexual attraction, and a desire for intimacy. Because I value our liaison and wish to continue our coupling, the action therefore has considerable significance to me."

How weird does it make her that statements like that from him make her heart leap a little inside her? Probably a lot, she supposes, but why start caring about that now? She runs her thumb across the sleek shine of his cheek. She almost imagines she can see her reflection in it. "I think that means you like it," she says.

Instead of answering, he touches her cheek in return, then trails his fingers slowly across her face, down her neck, and along her side. It's a teasing touch, tickling across the sensitive nerves of her torso, and she shivers. 

There is no mouth on her breasts this time, no kisses, but he still knows exactly how to touch her. His hands move over her body, careful and precise, and she wonders, not for the first time, what source material he's studied to learn so much about human sexual response. She still doesn't really want to know, but whatever it is, she's deeply grateful for its existence. 

She touches him in return, stroking his arms, his sides, his back. His body. _His body._ The hands caressing her thighs and cupping her breasts are _his_ hands, without modification. Naked.

She loves the warm, human hands he's created for her in the simulator, loves the feel of them, loves knowing that he made them for her, to give her something she craves. But she loves these hands, too, loves the truth of them.

"Isaac," she breathes. " _Isaac._ "

"Claire," he says, and it's a simple acknowledgment, a learned response, but it's also her lover saying her name in bed, and she's allowed to enjoy that. She's absolutely allowed to enjoy that.

She shifts against him a little, and he reads her desire perfectly. As clueless as he can be about social cues, his ability to pick up on physical ones is almost uncanny. Even as she's beginning to form the thought that she wants his hand on her clit, _right now_ , he's already there. And his movements are perfect. Precise and perfect. She doesn't know what data he's sampling for this: her heart rate, her breathing, her movements, the chemical composition of her sweat. Medically, it might be interesting, but she's never cared less about medicine than she does right now. All she cares about is having him--

 _Inside her._ He is inside her. Unbuffered by simulated flesh, the feel of his fingers is alien and exciting. She can feel the raised rings of his finger joints sliding across, around, and into her in deeply, _deeply_ interesting ways, and with aroused, fuzzy-minded amusement she wonders if she's ever going to be able look at his hands quite the same way again. She kind of hopes not.

He plunges his fingers in, deep, and she surges against him. Holding him there, inside her, she rolls him on top of her. The weight of him is so solid, so real. His hand, trapped between them, presses into her flesh like it's trying to become part of her. 

She cups his backside with both hands, pulls his hips against hers, and it's such a human-feeling thing, so familiar. The body beneath her hands might almost be a human one, with human muscles whose anatomy she could name and chart. But when she squeezes, she can feel the absolute solidity of him, the inhuman, steel-hard strength. 

She holds him there for a moment. Inside her. _Inside her_. Him. A real, physical part of him inside her, not an illusory appendage, no matter how well-crafted and responsive to his will. Just him.

His face hovers above hers. Cool metal and glowing eyes. His face, the one he was created with.

She's so glad they're doing this, this simple, entirely real thing. No intermediaries, nothing between the biology of her and the technology of him. Just two people having sex, face to face.

She lets out a breathy moan and looses her grip on him, giving him tacit permission to move again. He does, his body rising and falling above her, his fingers sliding in and out of her... But for the first time, it's not quite right, not quite what she wants.

"Harder," she says. " _Harder_ , Isaac."

He stops entirely. "I do not wish to injure you," he says. "Without the cushioning provided by the simulator's force fields there is a slight but significant chance of accidental damage to your tissues."

"Isaac, I trust you. You're not going to hurt me."

He seems to hesitate at that. She groans again, this time in frustration. "I'm a _doctor_ , remember? I think I know what is or isn't going to damage me, and if I'm wrong, I can damn well fix it. Now. Fuck. Me. _Harder._ "

"As you wish," he says, and he does. His body rises from hers again, falls, presses down against her _hard_ , presses his fingers into her _hard_ , rubs those ridges against her so wonderfully hard. And here it is again, that perfect, simple, unspoken harmony of movement. She can feel his body, his real, machine body, on hers and in hers. She can feel his focus on her, the intensity of him observing her, adapting to her, drinking in her responses to satisfy his beautiful, boundless, alien need to understand, to experience, to _be with_ the organic life he was created to know. To be with _her_.

He holds her close as she comes, his movements slowing and ceasing just when she needs them to, as she convulses blissfully around his fingers.

He's still the best she's ever had.

"Experiment successful?" she asks muzzily as he slides his fingers gently out of her and takes her in his arms.

"Yes," he says. And the sheer, bare, unambiguous simplicity of that answer makes her smile.

"See, you didn't damage me. I knew you wouldn't." She laughs a little and snuggles against him. 

A few wordless, satisfied minutes later, she says, "So, do you think you'd be willing to do this again? Maybe alternate it with the simulator?"

"Yes," he says again. "That would be most acceptable."

She tilts her face up and kisses him where his mouth would be.

"This encounter was most illuminating," he says. _Illuminating_. Is it anthropomorphizing him too much if she's coming to believe that words like that are what Isaac uses for things that make him happy? The more time she spends with him, the less she thinks it is. 

"There is one inconvenience to this locale, however," he continues. 

"Oh?"

"Yes. It would be appropriate at this juncture to kiss you. I regret that I cannot."

"Hmm." She leans back a little, and studies him for a moment. "I have an idea. Let's try this." She takes his hand, the one that was just inside her, and slowly guides it to her face. He tilts his head at her again, regarding her intently as she rubs his fingers against her mouth. She releases his hand, and he leaves it there for a moment, motionless, then brushes it softly across her lips. 

"This stimulation is pleasant to you as well?" he asks, and in his always-calm voice she thinks she can detect that faint note of excited curiosity he sometimes gets when he discovers a surprising new fact.

"Yes," she murmurs beneath his touch. "It is." She kisses his fingers, and takes them inside herself again. They taste of the musk of her and the metal of him. Kaylon synthetic life and human organic life, mingled into one.

Maybe, she thinks, it's a good omen for the future of their species. Or at least for her future and his.

She releases his fingers and kisses his face again. "Stay here until I fall asleep?" she asks.

"Of course." He puts his arm around her again, and holds her close. She nestles into him gratefully. He isn't warm, but he is comforting, and he is hers.

"Thank you," she says, already fading fast. And then, in a sleepy, half-unconscious murmur, "Love you."

If he replies, she does not hear him. But he holds her as she sleeps, and she dreams untroubled dreams.


End file.
